The Lego Movie is continuing its small plastic stampede across the globe, with its opening weekend figures in Australia topping $5.7 million, putting it firmly on track to be one of the biggest (semi-)local box-office hits of all time.

The animated family comedy, voiced by Chris Pratt, Will Arnett and Elizabeth Banks and made for Warner Bros. and Roadshow Pictures by Sydney studio Animal Logic, has already racked up more than $US410 million ($442 million) worldwide and $US250 million in the US, where it is the biggest grossing movie so far this year.

It is the latest hit for Animal Logic, which has lent its talents to George Miller's Happy Feet and Zack Snyder's Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. The Fox Studios-based business recently opened a Los Angeles-based production office and signed on for a sequel to The Lego Movie, slated for release in 2017.

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If The Lego Movie builds on its strong opening it could push towrads the $30 million mark locally. Happy Feet pulled in $6.6 million on its boxing-day release weekend in 2006 and $31,786,164 in total, making it the fourth biggest Australian movie of all time at the local box office. Miller's live-action and CGI family movie Babe, which took $36,776,544 and is the third-highest-grossing Australian-made film, opened with a relatively modest $1.86 million in December 1995.

The Lego Movie was pipped for top spot at the Australian box office on the weekend, however, by Disney's Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Marvel Entertainment offering took almost $6.06 million in receipts.

In the first 10 days of showing in the US, the Captain America sequel has pulled in $US96.2million, which is easily more than half the bounty earned by its 2011 predecessor Captain America: The First Avenger during its entire run. The original earned $US176.65 million.